YouTube Goes Live! Live streaming starts 7pm

Did you know that YouTube generates over 2 billion views per day? That means that the video sharing site, that started life as a home for videos of sneezing pandas, piano playing cats and “lonely people talking to themselves”, is reaching the tipping point where the “network is the content”.

YouTube have been experimenting with streaming live events for some time, with the Indian Premier League featured live on YouTube just over a year ago.

Now, live broadcasting is available to YouTube partner accounts:

“Today, we’ll also start gradually rolling out our live streaming beta platform, which will allow certain YouTube partners with accounts in good standing to stream live content on YouTube. The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead. In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we’ll roll this offering out incrementally over time.”

And on the subject of the network being the content, I’m willing to bet money that live streaming will come to Facebook in the not too distant future. Tagging people in to watch a show is where Facebook can really compete. In the case of video Google’s +1 button really needs to do something more exciting than it does now.